


Dance, Dance, Cry, Cry//This is How We Become Unsung Heroes

by Canarii



Series: Pavor!Verse [2]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Episode: s02e05 Pavor Nocturnus, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:06:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world didn't end in a day. From outbreak to the end, through different eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance, Dance, Cry, Cry//This is How We Become Unsung Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all my peeps who encouraged me to finish this up back when it was sitting in my drafts forever, and all the people on LJ who said such nice things.

Kate Freelander is in a foul mood the next time her brother calls her out of the blue. Months have passed since she sent him packing out of the city, and his lack of correspondence had been encouraging. It meant he hadn't gotten himself into any more trouble that he needed bailing out of.

She knows Thad is an adult and that she can't clean up his messes forever, but he'd only been nine years old when she had left home. Maybe it was guilt that made her keep coming to his rescue, trying to make up for all that lost time when he'd had no one to protect him, but that was over. She'd already been forced to feed a man to a ravenous beast this year to help out her little brother, and Kate wasn’t willing to keep gambling such high stakes just because he didn't have the head or stomach for the life he'd fallen into. Thad wasn't like her. He was better.

So when her phone vibrates on the bed covers next to her, she almost lets it ring when she sees who's calling her. But despite hesitation, she picks it up.

They talk for fifteen minutes, and it's probably the longest conversation she's had with her brother since they were kids. Maybe ever.

He's been staying in California with that girlfriend he'd told her all about. Her name is Laura and she's great.

She's also pregnant.

He wants to marry her.

Kate's glad he can't see her from the other end of the line, thumping her head back against her headboard, as she imagines the next big Thad Disaster on the horizon.

She tells him that this is the one thing she can't bail him out of if it goes sour. That this is his chance to turn things around once and for all, because he can't always count on big sis anymore. That he better be sure, because if he screws this up and becomes another deadbeat or absentee Dad, Kate is going to drive down there and kill him herself.

Thad doesn't say anything for a long time, but when he does, Kate, for the first time in years, believes his answer entirely.

***

Kate gets more calls after that, cataloguing the steps in her brother's new life as he relates them to her with a kind of restrained joy that comes across even over the miles and the phone lines.

They've moved to Los Angeles; Laura's got a decent job and he's looking for one. They've got a nice apartment and they're planning on getting married as soon as the baby's born, something simple. City hall maybe.

He pesters Kate to come visit until she manages to get a few days off from Magnus and finally catches a flight to California, reserving judgment. It's too soon to believe yet.

Kate's not sure what she was expecting, but Laura Malkovitz wasn't in any way the potential fiasco she'd been imagining for weeks on end. Laura was sharp, grounded, responsible, a few years older than Thad, and strangely enough, loved the little idiot beyond words. Kate liked her immediately.

Thad keeps trying to touch Laura's very pronounced stomach during dinner, and she smiles and swats his hands away, reminding him that she is a sacred vessel, and that he better damn well appreciate it. The two women laugh across the table at Thad's sheepish expression, but Kate doesn't miss how he never once takes his eyes off Laura.

The weekend ends too soon, and for the first time Kate's reluctant to head back to work and her world of tooth and claw. There's very little time to bask in the wake of the little holiday once she gets back to the Sanctuary. They're in the midst of a minor crisis, an outbreak of something in Old City. Should be taken care of soon enough.

***

Things get bad fast.

The last call Kate gets from her brother is on a rainy Sunday. She picks it up in a heartbeat, so quickly that she fumbles and almost drops her phone. The outbreak has spread worldwide and major cities have become deathtraps as the government and military have cut off roads and highways, even sunk bridges in an attempt at quarantine.

Kate's been trying to get a hold of her brother and sister-in-law for almost two weeks now, ever since the cell service over most of California had gone down. The reception is terrible and Thad's voice is crackly and broken over the line. They're okay, but they're holed up in one of the government shelters, and the rescue units that used to bring refugees out of the city haven't been back in a while. He's getting worried.

In the background, she can hear Laura's calm, even voice as she tries to calm their crying baby daughter. That sound is clear, even with the poor reception.

Kate can't keep up with her own voice as she spills assurances into the phone. It's going to be fine, she's got more than enough strings to pull, they just need to hang in there, she'll get them out of the city, all of them. It's all going to be okay. She promises.

The garbled voices on the other line disappear in a rush of sound, replaced by nothing but the dull, steady taunt of static.

If she'd been watching the news that day, she'd have known that New York and Miami are also leveled that day by tactical nukes. No warning, no chance. A rock and a hard place decision made in secret by those in a position of power who tell themselves that they're saving the world.

Kate drops the phone.

Will finds her ten minutes later, breaking the third knuckle on her hand. He drags her away from the wall, her arms pinned to her sides so she can't hurt herself anymore. She thinks she might have punched him too, but isn't sure. The minutes dissolved into hollow breathless sobs as he held her to his shoulder, careful not to crush her injured hand between them. Later he would tell her it had actually been hours, and that she hadn't imagined that feather light kiss to the crown of her head.

Kate couldn't have cared less about the seven hairline fractures; the pain of sudden and absolute loss is more raw and savage than any break or bruise. And right then, she's eight years old again, standing on that sidewalk with lungs full of stones, struggling to breath, struggling to believe.

***

Mumbai doesn’t last much longer. With a population denser than almost anywhere else on the planet, it isn’t long before the UN, or what’s left of it, is forced to make the call to turn India into a nuclear wasteland.

Kate never gets a last phone call with her mother and she never knows if Chaaya lived long enough to die under the bombs. She doesn’t know which she’d prefer.

The world is falling into chaos and across the globe the Sanctuaries are becoming true to their name, taking in refugees, human and abnormal alike. For now the walls and EM shields hold. Magnus works day and night, trying to find a cure, a vaccine, even an explanation for what the human race is becoming, to no avail. It never seems to stop raining anymore.

And somewhere in the midst of the apocalypse, Kate Freelander finds the time to have her fourth tattoo done.

The names of her dead are inked in a careful scrawl in the skin of her back, unrolling down like a scroll between her shoulder blades. _Chaaya Freelander, Thad Freelander, Laura Malkovitz, Katie Malkovitz-Freelander._

The needle burns when it etches her niece’s name over her spine, the tattooist taking care to make each letter clean and clear. She never wants to stop feeling it.

***

More and more names are added to the list over time, each one artistically cruder than the last as it becomes harder to find anyone alive with the necessary equipment and skill set.

 _Big Guy._

The Sanctuaries are abandoned. The remaining members of Magnus's team flee to South America to see what good they can do in an area with a far smaller concentration of infection. Helen never stops her research, and those near her begin to wonder if even an immortal can work themselves to death.

***

They try to make one last stand for Buenos Aires. Their team has been in the heart of the city for all of five minutes when it becomes obvious what a joke it was.

They get swarmed trying to make a break for higher ground and barely manage to hold off the oncoming packs of palefaces with Henry's new tech. It gets close, too close, until Magnus calls the retreat. They move backwards, fast back from where they'd come, too fast. Kate's boot catches on a loose cobblestone and the impact of her back hitting the ground knocks the breath out of her.

It's on top of her before her fingertips can even brush her fallen firearm. The putrid stench of death and rotting fabric overwhelm her senses as it lunges its deceptively humanlike mouth at her, the needlepoint proboscis plunging down towards her throat...

She closes her eyes just when its head explodes in a shower of blood and meat. The hot blood that splashes over her cheek as well as the sound of the shot force her back to reality. Standing over her, gun in hand at point blank range, stands none other than Will Zimmerman, looking almost as shocked at all of this as she was. But the moment of stunned silence passes, it has to, because she's taking his free hand and getting back on her feet.

And then he's pulling her into a rough, desperate embrace, fueled by relief and adrenaline that makes the arms around her seem almost viselike. It doesn't matter that she's got that thing's blood all over her face or that his hand still holding the pistol is shaking.

They pull apart and book after the others. Live another day.

***

 _Henry Foss._

Kate has a small, roughly inked paw print put beside his name. He would have liked that, even if he would never have admitted it.

The infection spreads with the refugees heading for both poles, and it isn’t long before even the jungles of Chile and Argentina cease to be safe.

***

It was nothing, really. Not a victory; there weren't any of those left anymore. Barely even anything worth celebrating in this world. But the patrols had come up dry on palefaces for over a week and the recent spells of rain had made the roads too muddy for any real travel. Making their way through the rest of the jungle would have to wait. At least for now.

And in truth, everyone appreciated the brief respite from the fight, but it was just the eye of the storm and they all knew it.

But they had time, for the moment, they had peace, and one of the young majors was having his birthday. Which was more than enough occasion for Helen Magnus's personal band of militia fighters to build up a bonfire and break out the alcohol.

Kate takes a few obligatory swigs from the first bottle handed to her before realizing that nothing, not even vodka, was the same anymore. The liquor was just another bitter reminder of a dead world, and the bonfire with its loud and bawdy company loses its appeal in minutes.

Besides, there's someone missing from the fireside.

Will is sitting a little ways away from camp, halfway up one of the steep hills that boxes it in at the edge of the jungle. He doesn't seem surprised to see her, no more surprised than she was to find him out here.

They don't say anything for a long time, they don't have to. The hillside affords them a perfect view of the stars. It's an increasingly rare sight these days; the skies are almost always clouded in grey storm clouds or the smoggy ash from fallout. The party still echoes from down below, the glow of the fire a single beacon in the still South American night.

Eventually they break the silence with what counts as small talk these days. He asks her how her arm is feeling from that last skirmish and she points out that he should file down that latch on his pistol because the safety is starting to stick.

And at some point they end up sitting close enough to touch and that's all it seems to take. Because it's sweet and impulsive and right, and something flutters in her stomach that she'd never admit when he leans in first to find her lips.

***

 _Declan Macrae._

The Scotsman barely escaped the overwhelming of the UK Sanctuary and had quickly joined the front lines of the militia. He went down in the rain, ambushed and crowded into a small Chilean alley by palefaces. When he ran out of ammunition, he started into the oncoming crowd with a machete, fighting to the last over the bodies of his unit. The alley had a back exit. He didn’t use it.

Magnus had said he'd never recovered from watching London burn.

***

Kate had never been a fan of the phrase 'making love'. And under the circumstances she wasn't sure she'd call it that even if she was.

It was a wet November in Argentina; she'd always remember that. Sick, yellow toned chemical rain tinged with nuclear waste. Not the kind of stuff you'd dare drink if you hadn't already been breathing it in for over three years.

Communications were down because of the weather; they'd been cut off from the larger camps for days. Magnus continued to work tirelessly, even without any subjects to treat. The last of her 'patients' had died two nights ago, a fifteen year old girl who had cried for her mother until the moment that horrific proboscis forced its way out her throat and ripped out her humanity with it. Kate watched.

In the end it's quite simple. He's locked in and she's locked in from the corrosive rain, and she can't stop herself from dragging Will down into that abandoned wing of the clinic and kissing him until the screaming in her head stops.

It's not sweet or romantic, but it's everything for an hour.

She doesn't try to tell herself that it was just a fling, that it didn't mean anything. It did, but there's no time for that, no space left in their lives for soft, stupid ideas like love.

But in the morning, when the rain stops, he has her six and she has his and for now that's all that matters.

***

By the time another year rolled around, the skinny medic in their compound with the steady hand and artist’s eye was long dead. Kate uses that as her excuse to hold off on adding the next name to her list, but it’s denial more than anything.

It’s not until Boston’s a crater full of ash and John Druitt has joined the memorial on her skin that she gives in to the inevitable truth.

In the end, it’s Will who adds the final name to her list, dipping the needle tentatively into the jar of ink once, twice, unsure. He’s avoiding the inevitability of the gesture as much as she has. She tells him to take his time, to make it right. What she doesn’t say is that she wants to feel the sting of the needle, and everything it represents, as long as possible.

Somewhere around the ‘m’, hot tears splash down on her back, mixing and blurring with the blood and excess ink beading around the name. Kate can’t reach his hand, lying on her stomach, but she lets him cry without word or judgment. They each put people to rest in different ways.

And by the end of the night, the fresh tattoo stretches clean and dark across her spine, the hidden headstone of the last hope this godforsaken world had.

 _Helen Magnus._

***

They get married the next chance they get on a day with sunlight. It’s an occurrence that is rarer and rarer these days. After so many unsuccessful attempts to stem the outbreak, their world was descending into a nuclear winter.

 

To a lot of people the choice to tie the knot seems awfully fast, like most of the alliances made in this brave new world. But in truth, it’s been a long time coming. Longer than either of them would admit.

There's no white dress or cummerbunds, and when it's all said and done, they put their rings next to their dog tags and the priest reloads his gun and gets ready for another shift.

***

Will misinterprets her horror when she finds out she’s pregnant. He’s already flown into a flurry of guilt and over nurturing apologies and, finally, barely hidden disappointment before she can get a word in edgewise.

 

It’s all so ridiculous that she laughs out loud for the first time in months, looking at his confused, kicked puppy expression as he clearly seems to wonder when exactly his wife had totally lost it.

The truth is, it’s not that she doesn’t want the child; it’s just that after years of watching his back, the idea of leaving her friend, lover, partner and husband alone in the field for months is terrifying. He looks like a little boy at Christmas when she stops his fussing long enough to sort him out, and kisses her hard enough to knock their teeth together like a pair of teenagers.

They laugh in the empty room and Kate promises herself that she’ll never see him added to her list.

***

The next few months fly by like clockwork and Kate goes much less stir crazy than she expected, cooped up in the compound all day long. During much of the day, she’s swamped by older woman, nurses and the like, who keep the compound running. They all seem much more excited about the miracle of life than she is, always cooing and clucking enthusiastically, and mostly talking to Kate’s stomach rather than her face.

At night, after lockdown, she’s back in the commons with her unit, playing cards and swatting Will’s hands away from her midsection. Some of the militia members like to tease their very round and currently out of commission field commander, suggesting that she has let herself go, living the easy life in retirement.

Kate smiles, says that she is a goddamn sacred vessel, and reminds them that she still carries a loaded sidearm.

***

Will bugs her about names and Kate shakes off the conversation once again, saying that they don’t even know the gender anyway. The truth is, if they decided on a name now, she’d never be able to go a day without thinking about how easily that name could end up etched on her back, below the godmother the child would never meet.

He’s dead sure it’s a girl and Kate doesn’t care, because either way, the kid’s inherited her right hook and consistently mistakes her left kidney for a speed bag.

Kate likes Laura for a girl’s name, but doesn’t say it, not after Will suggests Helen, in a voice that’s both sorrowful and reverent.

Kate asks if he really wants to give any child of hers a name that could be appreciated to ‘Hell’. They laugh and pretend it doesn’t hurt to talk about. Secretly, Kate decides that Helen’s a beautiful name for a girl.

***

Magnus has more of her coloring, but Kate thinks he already looks a lot like Will. She thinks it's the way his baby brow furrows when he's concentrating deeply on something. That kid thinks way too much for someone who's only been in the world five months.

Between living on military rations and the bombs and gunfire going off around the compound at all times of the day, everyone was nothing short of shocked that she'd managed to carry him to term. Probably out of sheer stubbornness more than anything else. That or the habit she'd gotten into at around seven months of routinely threatening her midsection that, if he made any sudden moves in the next six weeks, the grounding would start now.

Smart kid.

Being the youngest person in the compound by sixteen years means that Magnus Freelander Zimmerman is never lacking for attention or babysitters. Even so, Kate and Will organize their shifts and patrols so one of them was almost always with their son, and at first, not seeing so much other each other seems a small price to pay.

He's known to almost all as 'Zim' or 'Maggie', (the latter, his father hates), because he's got a big name for a little boy and plenty of time to grow into it.

His parents know all about growing up too fast.

Zim laughs at almost everything and sometimes nothing. On most days that sound makes it easy to forget that they're living underground. Makes it easy to forget the world's over, because to him it's still beautiful.

Kate takes him into the commons with her these days after lockdown, balancing him on her lap as he makes grabs for the cards that flash across the table before his eyes. The same men who teased her in months past share big grins at the little guy, and insist to Kate that he has her eyes, and certainly her smile.

***

If Kate had ever been one to send thanks to gods for the little blessings in life, she'd be willing to sacrifice a whole lot of virgins and goats to whoever had made it so that Will Zimmerman was such an incredible father. She honestly didn't know what she'd do without him, even with as much time as she'd spent looking after Thad in childhood, she found herself woefully clueless when it came to babies.

Well, that might have been selling herself a bit short. But even so, lying on their cot in the corner too exhausted from the day to even sleep, Kate watched Will with their son. Watched how, no matter how long the day, he always seemed to have that last bit of energy left to play with the little boy in his lap, to make him laugh.

Little 'Zim' wasn't so little anymore. Sometimes Kate could barely believe he was almost eight months old; he was getting so big, so fast. When he'd first been born, she had thought she couldn't wait for him to grow; the sheer vulnerability of his infancy had scared her so much. What chance had a baby in this world? Surely a little boy would be safer.

But now she almost ached for those six months back, for him to be tiny and easier to protect, less to worry about. But she knew that would never happen, knew she'd never stop worrying, not now that she had so much to lose.

***

They're fighting a war that's already lost.

 

Their squad loses eleven men one week and food rations are down. Meds are starting to look almost nonexistent in the back of the storeroom. Kate waits until the last second to risk pulling rank to get special access and the major who has the key to the med storage glares but doesn't turn her away. He knows, everyone does, the news is all over the compound by now, in whispers.

The last bit of topical anesthetic goes to Will, for the long, delicate process of removing the slivers of shrapnel that had penetrated his face, and finally sewing up the gash that the vicious bits of metal had torn through his brow and cheek. Kate stands protectively over his shoulder the entire time, tensed like a spring, as she supervises the medic's work.

He ends up pulling three shards from Will's cornea. She squeezes his hand too tight to be soothing, kisses the crown of his head and tells him it's going to be all right, even as the tension in her grip betrays her words.

***

They talk about running away.

Not really running, really, more like retiring. They'd fought their fight, and that fight was over, along with the lives of every other soul that they'd stood with in the final days. They had a child, they had a chance, and they had to take it together. Take their chance at a life, one for themselves and their son, that didn't involve living in fear underground. The colonies weren't much, but they were hope.

It wasn't that they were running away, abandoning the cause. The cities were almost emptied of civilians, and these days the string of refugees that their squads herded out of the city and sent north had slowed to a trickle.

Just as soon as Magnus was old enough, then they'd go, and maybe then Kate could sleep a full night without imagining the nightmare that she could lose them both.

***

Tommy Wilkins is twelve years old. He barely remembers a time before the monsters, before the clouds that never broke. But he does remember playing soccer once, and he'd never been that fast of a runner.

The boy is at the back of the crowd of refugees, barely flanked on both ends by the four militia members who are desperately trying to herd them down the narrow crooked alley to safety like so many stampeding cattle. Palefaces, too many to count at a glance, have poured down the street after the fleeing civilians.

The squad leader yells to his teammates, an echoed knell around the alley. Panic and fear blur words together into a terrified din as too many voices cry out at once. One of the refugees, an aging man, falls. One of the militia members tries to reach him, but can't, as seconds later he's been swarmed over by the creatures. A horrified gurgle emerges from the heaving mass over him, and then all too quickly they turn their attention back to the others.

One of the militia pulls the pin out of a grenade, and, in an act of sheer desperation, lobs it into the oncoming crowd of palefaces that are only yards behind the refugees.

Tommy Wilkins is too slow; he's too close.

Seconds tick by.

One.

Two.

Thre-

The explosive goes off, and in the horror of the moment, Tommy doesn't even see the figure that tackles him from the side, rolling him away, and covering him from the blast.

His ears ring and someone pulls him out of the circle of arms that had barely saved his life. Pulls him to his feet, urging him away, with the others. The third militia man is next to him, the one with the eye patch, speaking in short, frantic phrases as he nearly picks up the woman on the ground. Her legs are buckling, and there's something sharp and dully gleaming in her side.

The man who threw the grenade drags Tommy away, leaving those two to stumble after them. Tommy runs, time moving in slow motion, stunned into stillness. Ten minutes later he notices that there's something red and wet all over his shirt.

He never knew Kate Freelander, age 34, beloved daughter, sister, con artist, lover and mother.

 

***

Tommy Wilkins is sixteen years old. By all accounts he's an adult now in this strange new world of theirs, where the only sky that children see is the one over the tundra, but at least it's clear.

 

A slight breeze ruffles the tops of the grass, sending the whole valley swaying in a slow, lazy manner. Small, high-pitched giggles erupt from his left, another group of children playing their simple games in the grass. Tommy (he likes people to call him Tom now) stretches his legs as he stands up from his perch. It's about time to get back to work anyway, those fields aren't going to plow themsel-

A small, blurry shape runs smack into him, half bouncing off from the impact.

"Hey, watch it, kid," Tommy snaps instinctively. The little boy, maybe only five or six, shoots him back a gap-toothed smile, before turning on his heel and running back to his friends with a small laugh.

Tommy shrugs his hands into his pockets and heads back towards the colony, wondering how that kid felt ever so slightly familiar.

It was something around the eyes, or maybe the smile


End file.
